Convention of the Left

I returned last night from the recall meeting of the Convention of the Left in Manchester on Saturday, followed by a Green Left meeting yesterday, so a busy weekend.

I did not manage to make it to the original Convention meeting last September which lasted for four days and included many prominent speakers, including John Mc Donnell of the Labour Party and Derek Wall of the Green Party and Green Left. The recall meeting was much shorter, only one day and, of course, this meant that time was much more constrained. However, there was a good turnout ranging from left Labour members (Labour Representation Campaign) to Greens, Respect, Socialist Party, Permanent Revolution and some local grassroots campaigners.

The convention began with a general plenary session where we were given some really shocking statistics by an economist from the Left Economics Foundation about the scale of the economic collapse and the expected increase in unemployment. He put it in historical terms to show that the inflated balloon which had lasted since the post war period was set free from its moorings during the Thatcher period and had now finally burst. This was followed by a contribution from a senior union official in the Communication Workers Union who asked for support in the campaign against privatisation of the Post Office, recently announced by the Prince of Darkness - Peter Mandelson.

Later we broke up into workshops on a series of themes - Palestine, Planet, Peace and Public Services. Most of the Greens went to the Planet session but I attended the Peace session, as I am our party's delegate on the Steering Group of Stop the War Coalition and am very concerned about developments around Trident, NATO and the general drift towards war in Europe, not to mention the two wars which the UK is already involved in. We had very good contributions by speakers from CND and local peace activists, who pointed out the connection between the starving of health and social care budgets and the vast amounts being spent on conducting the current wars, along with the proposed Trident programme. The amounts being spent on the latter are truly shocking. An earlier speaker at the convention had said that we must us Chomsky's idea of 'linkage', i.e. demonstrating how policy decisions in one field have an impact on decisions in another.

Finally, we had an open plenary where the issue of working with other progressive groupings and parties was raised. The Chair of Respect in the North West region stated that her party would not contest the European parliamentary elections in her region so that the Green Party candidate, Peter Cranie, could offer a clear challenge to the BNP. It is in this region that the BNP is considered to have a real possibility of winning a seat in the European Parliament - which would be a real disaster for all progressive minded people in this country and would cause immeasurable damage to racial equality. I told the Convention that the Green Party wanted not to be sectarian and that we were prepared to support John Mc Donnell's election campaign in West London, as long as he did not stand as a Labour candidate. I stated, and I believe this firmly, that Labour is "the party of war and reaction". There are good Labour MPs, although they are few in number. But at the end of the day they will be used to prop up a government and a leadership which is both economically and morally bankrupt. I did say that I would encourage the Greens not to stand against progressive non-Labour left candidates, where that could be agreed. I firmly believe that those on the left in British politics need to stand together and challenge the ruling system.

The Green Left meeting on Sunday was informative and inspiring and discussed issues around poverty and unemployment, with the involvement of the party's Spokesperson on Disability. As someone who has worked in the disability field for the last few years as director of a voluntary sector organisation, I am more than aware of the marginalisation and increasing poverty of older and disabled people. Labour's current plans on welfare reform will plunge thousands of them into penury, and I intend to oppose it with all my strength.

I returned from Manchester feeling that we face a really difficult period but inspired by meeting so many people who are fighting for a better future.